The trouble is, you can wait forever for the best version.
To be pragmatic, take a view of the "best version you will like". I've held off buying some DVDs because I heard a rumour of a decent special edition with cleaned up picture/sound, directors cuts etc (like I'll get the next editions of Kill Bill, not the current ones).
But for me, that is that. I don't care enough to get that extra 1% of value which is "new cast commentary".
Unless a DVD comes straight out as an excellent set, I hold off, rent the basic version and then buy the decent version.
I've held off buying the 2 disc editions of LOTR and not yet even seen ROTK, because I wanted to see the extended version.
The problem isn't about what we fuel cars with, the problem is mostly with cars themselves, and how people are wedded to them. Of course, the car companies have no interest in disuading people from using them. They just give greener cars as the solution (in some cases, I'm convinced that many "concept" cars are just to placate governments that they are taking the environment seriously).
People sit on motorways in the UK and it's car after car after car. Each one with one person in it. Think just how nuts that is.
Try asking co-workers about car sharing, though. Most aren't interested. They want to be in their car, even though the expense of petrol can be huge.
Personally, I do some travel by bus, train and car and don't understand why people prefer cars. On trains, I get valuable time to read books, do work on the laptop or just have a coffee.
Re:The logistics of building the Death Star
on
Star Wars Minutiae
·
· Score: 3, Funny
They should have put some DRM on those plans.
Re:Ceefax is cool but dated....
on
Ceefax Turns 30
·
· Score: 1
The trouble is, "richer digital content" is really rubbis sometimes. It seems to mean that my TV times are in colour rather than B&W. Much slower, and I find, less reliable.
I still find myself switching from freeview to TV tuner and putting old teletext on.
As an ex-ZX81 and ZX-Spectrum hacker (Timex machines to US Readers) there was a real challenge to make something work, often because of memory restrictions and lack of in-built functions.
A friend of mine wrote a little address book app which did a search on names by basically storing it in a table with a hash key. These things weren't there, and so he had to write it.
I remember the first time I moved a sprite by a pixel! Nowadays, you just tell the window to just do it.
I think the 80s tech meant that you had to do a lot of thinking. It also teaches people a lot about the fundamentals of computing which is quite heavily abstracted now.
Incidentally, there was a service in the UK run by British Telecom called Prestel which was designed for businesses and could get you things like flight times. I worked in a shoe sole company writing some modelling software during my college years on a BBC B with 32K of memory which had a prestel adaptor which they used for getting flight times.
Copyright I think is really a way of granting something we don't really want to grant - that is the right for something not to be copied, the right to protect ideas, and as such, people are granted a temporary license to them. That is, you get to exploit it for a time (quite a long time).
Copyright was put in place from the point of view that if you don't have copyright, you'll get people just ripping off your work and therefore, people won't create. That's very reasonable.
But, 50 years is quite long enough for a person, but then this is more about corporations, not people. Copyright was not created in a time of giants of publishing. When copyright first arrived, it was more about individual creative people, for whom a copyright of even 20 years would grant them sufficient income.
If you record something age 18 and have 50 years, that means it expires when you are 68.
Thing is, Firefox already comes with leather seats, asswarmers, cruise control and all that.
Just the other day, I compared Firefox with IE to someone as like getting out of a brand new 5 series BMW into my 10 year old Fiat. The difference being, I can't afford a 5 series BMW.
Maybe Windows should make it a little more difficult to go altering dial-up settings. How many users would mind a warning message saying "a program is trying to change your dial-up".
Does any spyware/anti-virus software check this (and I don't mean check for a piece of particular spyware, but check the behaviour).
IANAL but this wouldn't count under the Computer Misuse Act. Sending someone an email except to say introduce a virus or blow up their machine would count under the Computer Misuse ACt.
This also wouldn't count under the data protection act. The Data Protection Act deals with personal information. Opting to put a file on a website no longer makes it personal information. The bulletin board situation is about user names and say name and address information that is posted.
BTW Which movie studios are posting incorrect figures for star pay/movie costs etc? Which web sites are saying that?
I have bought books in the past for a subject, and really they've collected a lot of dust. Once I have enough knowledge on a language, online articles and things like Safari are more useful.
It's a tricky balance. Personally, I use Safari and love it.
There's 3 levels of learning to me:-
Introduction. Book, definitely. Getting to know a subject like a new language.
Odd gaps in knowledge. Articles/newsgroups.
Learning how to do something with a language that you've never done before. This is where Safari works for me. I know C#, but didn't know how to do something with XML datasets. But the articles were a bit vague or covered one small part of it. So, I checked out the book, read the chapters, got going on it and then put it back. 2 weeks of checking out.
It's not just the cost for me - I just don't have space for more giant size books.
Maybe not, but Microsoft is only doing what is legal.
People who complain about Microsoft doing evil things should consider this - corporations don't exist to be the protectors of society. I've heard this argument before "corporations should be more altruistic". I call BS.
Corporations exist for one reason - to make money. They do this by delivering good services and maybe a side effect can be altruism. In many cases, even this so-called altruism is calculated. Companies sponsor charity events because it generates trade and goodwill for them to cover the wrongs they are doing elsewhere.
You want to deal with such issues? Vote with your pocket, vote for a better government that will nail the excesses of corporations or go to another country. Make a considerable political donation to a party most aligned with your views.
It's not a "Microsoft" problem. It's a "Government" problem.
There's one big benefit if the wealthy do it, even if they are showing off - it will undoubtedly bring down the price for the rest. There's a name for such people in marketing - "early adopters". They are people who get in there with technology and pay for the R&D for the rest. They are the people who don't look at CPU prices and consider bang for buck. They want the best RIGHT NOW.
One thing with prices is that goods are sold based on people partly looking at number of units anticipated.
The more people buying, the more people there will be producing and selling solar panels. Out of this will fall companies producing newer, cheaper and more efficient solar panels. I don't know what the manufacturing process is, but I imagine that production levels are not that massive. If volumes go up, you'll end up with a Toyota or Nissan of solar panels, producing them at high efficiency, employing more automation.
Think about something like LCD screens and the price 3 years ago vs now.
Is it, though? The key here is distribution, and are any of the other studios really a better bet for distribution. Or are you suggesting they go it alone? If SKG didn't already have an animation area, that would be the best match - get in with some creative guys. Who says Fox, WB or Paramount will be any better than Disney?
Even if there was some problems, that's resolvable. Pixar is in a renegotiating position, and quite honestly have a pretty strong hand. Disney have had how many giant hits since The Lion King?
Saying all that, who's got the stores? Who's got the bigger name with the average households across the globe? Who's got the theme parks? Whilst we'd all like to think that big budget animation is more than for kids, that's not how most people see it.
There's a time in the future, where I could imagine Disney, particularly from the kids animation side (which would hit the shops, theme parks etc.) being smaller than Pixar.
What I want to know is how long they can last on age-old characters. What's the last non-Pixar character that was a big draw for Disney? Little Mermaid? Belle? Simba?
Have they created anything of any worth since Katzenberg left?
I give some of the guys running www.spreadfirefox.com some real credit here, particularly it seems, Blake Ross.
One thing they are doing that is very, very good is to make deliverable targets. Good local fundraising does this - say to people "we need $20,000 to buy a new bus to take the kids we help on trips". When people see things like that, they think "only $20,000? I'll give $10". Then, you put another article out saying "thanks for all the money raised, and people feel much closer to the charity".
Just saying "give us your money for this worthy cause" has less of an effect.
What are AOL like for standards, though? I thought that to collect your mail, you had to use their mail client.
It's also to me the whole thing of what might be labelled "0wn3rship", that is, AOL will direct you to what THEY want to take you to, stuff they are getting a nice commission on. It's about "here's some exclusive content" so the only way to get something is to be on AOL (I don't object to paying for content, just the whole "you need this other content too" attitude).
Saying that, I think there's a market for an "internet terminal" proper. No hard drive, just a browser. You want to write a document? You go online and load up the java/flash document editor which shows you the documents you have edited, you edit them and save them back on a central server. Email? Webmail.
It's sometimes not just about "affording", it can be about channelling energy that could be better channelled elsewhere.
A friend of mine worked for a food production company and they reached a point where they worked out they were not making enough company for a retailer. They were making a profit, but really, not much of a profit for the hassle required.
A lot of companies just seek volume - trade with anyone and everyone you can. Sometimes, some customers aren't worth having. The deal with these people - raise your prices and see if they stay - that's a no-lose situation.
You are right, they don't back down, but some ideas do seem to fizzle out.
One I've noticed recently - I've hardly seen an obvious FrontPage site in months. Either people who started building websites which look less "frontpage like" or it's not being used as much.
Is there anyway to calculate the level of Frontpage usage?
Slashdot Mirror
They are potentially losing business. Where's the email address input so they can capture potential customers from outside the US now?
To be pragmatic, take a view of the "best version you will like". I've held off buying some DVDs because I heard a rumour of a decent special edition with cleaned up picture/sound, directors cuts etc (like I'll get the next editions of Kill Bill, not the current ones).
But for me, that is that. I don't care enough to get that extra 1% of value which is "new cast commentary".
Unless a DVD comes straight out as an excellent set, I hold off, rent the basic version and then buy the decent version.
I've held off buying the 2 disc editions of LOTR and not yet even seen ROTK, because I wanted to see the extended version.
People sit on motorways in the UK and it's car after car after car. Each one with one person in it. Think just how nuts that is.
Try asking co-workers about car sharing, though. Most aren't interested. They want to be in their car, even though the expense of petrol can be huge.
Personally, I do some travel by bus, train and car and don't understand why people prefer cars. On trains, I get valuable time to read books, do work on the laptop or just have a coffee.
They should have put some DRM on those plans.
I still find myself switching from freeview to TV tuner and putting old teletext on.
Some content doesn't need to be richer, anyway.
A friend of mine wrote a little address book app which did a search on names by basically storing it in a table with a hash key. These things weren't there, and so he had to write it.
I remember the first time I moved a sprite by a pixel! Nowadays, you just tell the window to just do it.
I think the 80s tech meant that you had to do a lot of thinking. It also teaches people a lot about the fundamentals of computing which is quite heavily abstracted now.
Incidentally, there was a service in the UK run by British Telecom called Prestel which was designed for businesses and could get you things like flight times. I worked in a shoe sole company writing some modelling software during my college years on a BBC B with 32K of memory which had a prestel adaptor which they used for getting flight times.
Copyright was put in place from the point of view that if you don't have copyright, you'll get people just ripping off your work and therefore, people won't create. That's very reasonable.
But, 50 years is quite long enough for a person, but then this is more about corporations, not people. Copyright was not created in a time of giants of publishing. When copyright first arrived, it was more about individual creative people, for whom a copyright of even 20 years would grant them sufficient income.
If you record something age 18 and have 50 years, that means it expires when you are 68.
Just the other day, I compared Firefox with IE to someone as like getting out of a brand new 5 series BMW into my 10 year old Fiat. The difference being, I can't afford a 5 series BMW.
Does any spyware/anti-virus software check this (and I don't mean check for a piece of particular spyware, but check the behaviour).
The Fall, Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, The Pixies. If you can find Cruiser's Creek on there,try it.
This also wouldn't count under the data protection act. The Data Protection Act deals with personal information. Opting to put a file on a website no longer makes it personal information. The bulletin board situation is about user names and say name and address information that is posted.
BTW Which movie studios are posting incorrect figures for star pay/movie costs etc? Which web sites are saying that?
Really, you have to respond to the MPAA that they've made a silly mistake. If they then continue the action, tell them again.
If they still proceed, it's probably then time to go find the very best and most expensive lawyer you can and explain the situation to him.
That depends, really.
I have bought books in the past for a subject, and really they've collected a lot of dust. Once I have enough knowledge on a language, online articles and things like Safari are more useful.
There's 3 levels of learning to me:-
Introduction. Book, definitely. Getting to know a subject like a new language.
Odd gaps in knowledge. Articles/newsgroups.
Learning how to do something with a language that you've never done before. This is where Safari works for me. I know C#, but didn't know how to do something with XML datasets. But the articles were a bit vague or covered one small part of it. So, I checked out the book, read the chapters, got going on it and then put it back. 2 weeks of checking out.
It's not just the cost for me - I just don't have space for more giant size books.
People who complain about Microsoft doing evil things should consider this - corporations don't exist to be the protectors of society. I've heard this argument before "corporations should be more altruistic". I call BS.
Corporations exist for one reason - to make money. They do this by delivering good services and maybe a side effect can be altruism. In many cases, even this so-called altruism is calculated. Companies sponsor charity events because it generates trade and goodwill for them to cover the wrongs they are doing elsewhere.
You want to deal with such issues? Vote with your pocket, vote for a better government that will nail the excesses of corporations or go to another country. Make a considerable political donation to a party most aligned with your views.
It's not a "Microsoft" problem. It's a "Government" problem.
One thing with prices is that goods are sold based on people partly looking at number of units anticipated.
The more people buying, the more people there will be producing and selling solar panels. Out of this will fall companies producing newer, cheaper and more efficient solar panels. I don't know what the manufacturing process is, but I imagine that production levels are not that massive. If volumes go up, you'll end up with a Toyota or Nissan of solar panels, producing them at high efficiency, employing more automation.
Think about something like LCD screens and the price 3 years ago vs now.
Even if there was some problems, that's resolvable. Pixar is in a renegotiating position, and quite honestly have a pretty strong hand. Disney have had how many giant hits since The Lion King?
Saying all that, who's got the stores? Who's got the bigger name with the average households across the globe? Who's got the theme parks? Whilst we'd all like to think that big budget animation is more than for kids, that's not how most people see it.
There's a time in the future, where I could imagine Disney, particularly from the kids animation side (which would hit the shops, theme parks etc.) being smaller than Pixar.
What I want to know is how long they can last on age-old characters. What's the last non-Pixar character that was a big draw for Disney? Little Mermaid? Belle? Simba?
Have they created anything of any worth since Katzenberg left?
Nice one Kevin.
One thing they are doing that is very, very good is to make deliverable targets. Good local fundraising does this - say to people "we need $20,000 to buy a new bus to take the kids we help on trips". When people see things like that, they think "only $20,000? I'll give $10". Then, you put another article out saying "thanks for all the money raised, and people feel much closer to the charity".
Just saying "give us your money for this worthy cause" has less of an effect.
"enough to go forward". Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that SCO had so far presented zero evidence to support any of their claims.
What are AOL like for standards, though? I thought that to collect your mail, you had to use their mail client.
It's also to me the whole thing of what might be labelled "0wn3rship", that is, AOL will direct you to what THEY want to take you to, stuff they are getting a nice commission on. It's about "here's some exclusive content" so the only way to get something is to be on AOL (I don't object to paying for content, just the whole "you need this other content too" attitude).
Saying that, I think there's a market for an "internet terminal" proper. No hard drive, just a browser. You want to write a document? You go online and load up the java/flash document editor which shows you the documents you have edited, you edit them and save them back on a central server. Email? Webmail.
A friend of mine worked for a food production company and they reached a point where they worked out they were not making enough company for a retailer. They were making a profit, but really, not much of a profit for the hassle required.
A lot of companies just seek volume - trade with anyone and everyone you can. Sometimes, some customers aren't worth having. The deal with these people - raise your prices and see if they stay - that's a no-lose situation.
One I've noticed recently - I've hardly seen an obvious FrontPage site in months. Either people who started building websites which look less "frontpage like" or it's not being used as much.
Is there anyway to calculate the level of Frontpage usage?
If you ever get to the UK, you could get yourself on a brewery tour or people from Camra would gladly advise you on where to drink.